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Recently, I had a hard disk die. This hard disk had all my .vdi files. I moved them to another disk, and did not think they were corrupt.

I had VB tell me that they aren't available, and that is expected because the disk they were on doesn't exist anymore.

When I try to point the VB profile at the new location of the .vdi, I get a message saying:

Failed to open the hard disk F:\Virtual Disks\Win 7x64 Test.vdi.
Cannot register the hard disk 'F:\Virtual Disks\Win 7x64 Test.vdi' {ae2a96f8-febf-42d6-8a04-3bca2ff95a47} because a hard disk 'H:\Virtual Disks\Win 7x64 Test.vdi' with UUID {ae2a96f8-febf-42d6-8a04-3bca2ff95a47} already exists.
Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)
Component: VirtualBox
Interface: IVirtualBox {3b2f08eb-b810-4715-bee0-bb06b9880ad2}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)


What does that mean?

What should be an easy thing is not.

Thanks

Means that you already have it registered and will need to unregister it and then register it again. If you have snap shots this will be an issue.
If you have snapshots see CloneVDI Tool and read how to fix this.

I do not have snapshots. What do I do then? I don't have any use for cloning...

As Perry said, just unregister the existing disks then re-register them from their new location. You may have to shut VirtualBox down for 30 seconds in between, so that the background process "forgets" about the old media.

Having said all that, IMHO it is a very bad idea to have the media in an external folder. If you have a backup then why not just copy the vdi files back to their expected location, assuming you have now fixed the disk problem? For ease of backup etc, vdi files should be kept inside the VM folder. Most advice found on this site will assume you have done this.

A proper metod to copy vdi disks is using copy function in Virtual media manager.

mpack wrote:As Perry said, just unregister the existing disks then re-register them from their new location. You may have to shut VirtualBox down for 30 seconds in between, so that the background process "forgets" about the old media.

Having said all that, IMHO it is a very bad idea to have the media in an external folder. If you have a backup then why not just copy the vdi files back to their expected location, assuming you have now fixed the disk problem? For ease of backup etc, vdi files should be kept inside the VM folder. Most advice found on this site will assume you have done this.

Well, in my case, I have a tiny SSD hard disk for boot, and then a larger regular hard disk for regular stuff, and then a pure storage drive for very big files, such as VDI files, and the pure storage drive is the one that died, it was unfixable. I'm just glad that I was able to get my files off of it safely. Keeping files in one place has never been a luxury for me in the days of 25 gig files... The system did work well until the drive problem...

Now I have to figure out how to "unregister" them, it seemed to me that the thread was less than clear. The need to unregister them seems odd to me, you should just be able to point the VB engine to the vdi file, and go. That would make sense.

But I'll muddle through it.

thanks

lexxx wrote:A proper metod to copy vdi disks is using copy function in Virtual media manager.

Would you like to explain just how you do this, given the scenario listed above?

Perryg wrote:

lexxx wrote:A proper metod to copy vdi disks is using copy function in Virtual media manager.

Would you like to explain just how you do this, given the scenario listed above?

I you use the method i suggested, then there would not be the problem like the scenario listed above because it changes the uuid of that particular virtual disk and no need for any un/registration.

IFAIK copy only works with registered media. The problem was they had a drive failure. Continue with how you would do this using copy.

All of this depends on what exactly was copied during your restore from backup. If you copied everything back to the original place and if the virtualbox.xml file was placed back then you should only need to go into the guest settings and attach the drive in the storage section.

The issue here is trying to add a complete guest that is already registered. (see your error). Since the UUID are the same it will not allow you to simply add the guest back. You would need to unregister it (right click on the guest icon & left click on remove) BE CAREFUL after this point to not delete the files unless you have a backup.

If the topic author succesfuly moved vdi files to another location, he could use vbox disk copy function as well.
I am sorry if i was explaining uncorrectly.

At the time,I didn't even know that function existed. Kinda silly that you can't easily copy files from one drive to another and have them easily work.

It should work with any other virtualbox hosts where uuids of these virtual drives has not yet been registered.

I figured out how to what I needed to do, but it was still a multi-step process that was in my opinion unnecessary.

Thanks

Im using new install of viurtalbox with new iso and im recieving this error also can someone explain how to fix this? New install on new cpu